Nicole Anderson

Dr. Anderson obtained an AB in psychology from Washington University in St. Louis, and a MA and PhD in psychology from the University of Toronto. She is also a registered clinical neuropsychologist. Dr. Anderson has been a scientist at Baycrest since 2001. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, and Associate Editor of the Journal of Gerontology: Psychological Sciences.

Research Synopsis

Dr. Anderson's primary research focuses on cognitive interventions for healthy older adults, older adults with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) or adults recovering from stroke or traumatic brain injury. The goal of this research is to understand the cognitive mechanisms of the interventions, and to then use that information to help improve their efficacy. She is interested in whether the interventions improve the targeted function, whether they generalize to other cognitive tasks and to everyday functioning, and whether they change brain activity so that networks implicated in healthy (or younger) adults are recruited after treatment. Via collaboration with Dr. Carol Greenwood and Dr. Bradley MacIntosh and others, Dr. Anderson also conducting research on the cognitive and neural correlates of Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). While there is now ample evidence of memory deficits associated with T2DM, information about how this plays out in terms of cerebral blood flow or the BOLD signal is lacking. Their goal is to gain a comprehensive understanding of these mechanisms, and to ascertain how they are common or separable from the effects of a common co-morbidity of T2DM, namely hypertension.